A simple access device provides access to a high-capacity network to a traffic source. Once connected to a traffic source, an edge module in the high-capacity network can assign a sub-network address to the traffic source so that the source may also serve as a sink for data traffic. Although the sub-network address assigned to the traffic source may bear little resemblance to a network address for the edge module, distant edge modules may route traffic to a traffic sink having such a sub-network address easily and flexibly. Features may be added to the access device, which would otherwise be little more than a multiplexer, but, for the most part, the edge modules make the routing decisions. Data transfer from the current Internet to the high-capacity network and vice versa can be facilitated by requiring that each edge module in the high-capacity network that acts as a gateway be bilingual, that is, understand both a simple high-capacity network-specific routing protocol and conventional Internet protocols.